Will

Will Self Will (2019)
A Memoir is the sub-heading, and it's autobiographical rather than an autobiography at least in so much as that it's an autobiography of Self's addiction more than it is of the author, dividing into four seemingly pivotal years of our man's relationship with the arm candy. That being said, the narrative swims back and forth up and down its own timeline, not so much stream of consciousness as following causes, effects and back again and in doing so simulating the way in which memory works, and in which experience is informed by the same. At this juncture it seems to be customary for someone to point out that Will Self is in fact fourth in line to the throne, is never seen without his characteristic top hat and monocle, and has no business telling us about anything which is rightfully the intellectual property of the working class - swearing and smoking fags for example. Also, if we really want to know what it's all about, we should read some Irvine Welsh.

Well, I've tried and I didnae like it, finding it all a bit screechy and pleased with itself whilst revelling in its depictions of people pooing into used syringes then injecting in hope of harvesting just a few remnant traces of lovely, lovely skag; and I don't care if he's from the streets because so am I, if we're going to take that as any sort of achievement. Will isn't from the streets in the sense of Irvine Welsh, but to be fair it makes no such claim, instead preferring to just get the fuck on with it and tell it like it was, with or without instances of cinematically crowd pleasing squalor. The shadow of William Burroughs, another young man of means with a penchant for recreational substances, looms large over Self's life, his writing, and this novel - and it is a novel in the sense of How the Dead Live, Dorian and the rest. We follow his addiction from its north London conception to building sites, Oxford university, Australia, India, and finally to rehab, a circuitous route peppered with cultural debris, earworms, and homilies repeated to the point of achieving mystical escape velocity. The will of the title, quite aside from attempts to give up the smack, seems to be about the desire for forward motion, inertia, and consequent failure. Perhaps inevitably, Will is not quite an easy read and is fairly disorientating, but in this respect seems true to the chemically refined focus of its subject.

'Woodbines, eh,' says Freddy, 'old man fags.'

Will takes one as well, leaving a single slim white missile. Yes . . . old man fags - the fags smoked by entropy itself . . . then crushed into a flying-saucer-shaped-ashtray heading for a black-fucking-hole . . .

Regardless of idiotic concerns about the qualifications of the author, Will communicates something rather than just waggling it in your face, although there's some of that too; and if the author's distinctive voice renders comparison to Burroughs a little pointless - aside from the non-linear thing - it pisses all over Confessions of an English Opium Eater. So that's a thumbs up from me.

Mutant Genesis

 

Chris Claremont & Jim Lee Mutant Genesis (1991)
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in…

Having finished a somewhat exhausting and extended bout of proofreading, I finally claw back some time in which to take a look at what books Santa brought. I begin with Will Self's memoir - which is absorbing and a joy to read - and then this turns up in the mail just as I come to the end of the first part, and suddenly I'm Principal Skinner admiring Ralph Wiggum's display of Star Wars action figures in that Simpsons episode. Look, I hear myself thinking as I gaze at the cover, it's the Beast, and there's Nightcrawler, and why - Psylocke is there too, because apparently I'm still twelve.

After seventeen years, Chris Claremont ceased writing the X-Men in 1991, having become massively disillusioned with what Marvel wanted to do to his characters. I recently discovered the existence of 2009's X-Men Forever, a title wherein Claremont continues the story he would have told had he stayed with the book, thus overwriting whatever the hired hands came up with in his absence; and specifically continuing the story from his final three issues, collected here and retroactively labelled Mutant Genesis for the sake of the sales pitch. These issues were actually the first three of 1991's X-Men, then the brand new collectible companion title to the long running Uncanny X-Men. I used to have them but it really felt like the whole thing had gone tits up, so I sold them and didn't bother restocking during my recent campaign of buying back all the stuff I've flogged on eBay. Anyway, I sort of can't not at least take a look at X-Men Forever, and I therefore bought this as a refresher.

I remember this thing as a complete dog's dinner, and so much so as to have bequeathed me no memory of what happens besides various angry looking mutants flying through the air, page after page after page. What happens is the death of Magneto. Claremont began the rehabilitation of Magneto, the previously somewhat generic supervillain, back in Uncanny X-Men #150, eventually transforming him into a sympathetic character on the grounds of it making for a more interesting, even more plausible story than the usual cycle of superpowered battles and evil cackling. Marvel sort of lost its mind around the beginning of the nineties, noticed how well all those X-books were selling and decided to cash in by upping the marketing campaign and turning the books into something which missed the whole point of why we'd bothered reading them in the first place. Thus was Claremont, the architect of the book's success, reduced to providing snappy dialogue for the story Jim Lee - a proven seller if ever there was - wanted to tell, and the story Jim Lee wanted to tell was mostly a resumption of superpowered battles and evil cackling with Magneto reverting to his nefarious ways so as to keep Rob Liefeld from feeling a bit gay when leafing through a copy in the store.

Amazingly, reading this thing three decades later, I realise it's not bad. It doubtless helps that I'm reading while curious to find out what happened, as distinct from praying it makes some fucking sense without my having to read ten other titles as part of the publisher's increasingly transparent attempts to empty out my wallet. I say not bad, although the story is standard caped stuff demonstrating little of the imagination or flair which had brought the X-books through the previous decade; but Claremont's dialogue carries the whole thing, lending even the most stupid plot twists a sense of gravity - maybe not quite turning a small boy smashing his action figures together into Shakespeare, but certainly something in that direction; and even the restoration of evil Magneto is somehow convincing.

Jim Lee's art is, just as I remember - more or less Rob Liefeld with more than just three facial expressions and without the wonky anatomy - but it doesn't really matter because Claremont's dialogue does all of the heavy lifting; and does it with astonishing grace given that he was effectively filling out his own P45 here. It's a tragedy of sorts in so much as that 1991's X-Men #1, reprinted here, remains the single biggest selling issue of a comic book of all time, and was written pretty much under protest by a man who had to wait another two decades before he was able to finish the story as he wanted it, but it's a testament to his ability that he was able to deliver this swan song in such fine voice.

Marvel Comics - the Untold Story

Sean Howe Marvel Comics - the Untold Story (2012)
After several versions of the life of Stan Lee, only one of which was written by the man himself, I get the impression I probably should have started with this thing. Sean Howe answers just about every question I had, including those I'd assumed probably weren't worth asking. His attention to detail is exhaustive and impartial - so far as I'm able to tell. I've seen online mutterings about the Untold Story having given Jim Shooter, Marvel's editor-in-chief from 1978 to 1987, something of a battering, but nothing written here seems massively unfair or uneven, and credit is freely given where it's due.

Howe's account begins with Martin Goodman's Timely Comics, sinks its teeth in with the tenacity of a bull terrier, and doesn't let go until we're caught up to the present day. The picture revealed is broad yet coherent, with the grinding inevitability of the corporate appetite countered by reminders of why Marvel worked, when it did work, and often in spite of itself. This matters - at least in so much as any of this matters - because our collective memory of the comics biz and its role in popular culture is revealed as comprising at least as high a quotient of received wisdom and strategic mythology as Stan Lee's somewhat unreliable version of events. The idea that the comic book ever needed to grow up, for one example, seems to be an answer to a question that didn't need asking; and while it's clear that the average age of the target reader has varied from one decade to the next, the notion of the figure steadily increasing up until the revelation of Alan Moore's Watchmen is obviously bollocks in light of Marvel having been such a huge hit with the beatnik community in the sixties, and then the brain stretching likes of Starlin's Warlock - amongst many others in the seventies. Indeed, our idea of the juvenile comic book - to which superheroes with drink problems was apparently the antidote - seems to have formed in the late seventies as a reaction to Starlin, Gerber and the rest in the form of Godzilla, Star Wars and Shogun Warriors tie-in material. I'm generalising here, but it's nothing like so clear cut as all those Time Out articles told us.

Much needed testimony regarding what was once so great about Marvel is offset by unflinching reportage of the artists and writers getting screwed over and over and over from one decade to the next, even with the understanding that work-for-hire was never anything more than an assembly line. We presumably all know about Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and inevitably they're just the tip of a heartless corporate iceberg specialising in using them up, wearing them out, and asset stripping their legacy. Some of it is heartbreaking, not least realising that Chris Claremont's departure from the X-books back in '91 actually was the betrayal it resembled from the outside; and that Rob Liefeld got to revamp Captain America at some point in the mid-nineties after his previous anatomical bowdlerisations had driven me away from the medium; and while we're here…

Before Grunewald left for his weekend home on August 9, he grabbed a preview copy of Rob Liefeld's Captain America #1. It was Grunewald's favourite Marvel character; until a few months earlier, he'd either written or edited every issue since 1982. On Monday morning, rumours started flying around the offices, confirmed by an 11AM email from Terry Stewart. 'It's with my deepest and most profound regret that I inform you that Mark Grunewald passed away unexpectedly early today at home,' the note began. The cause of death was a heart attack.

Grunewald was forty-three, a non-smoker who exercised regularly, and I didn't even realise he was dead. I always liked his work. I'm not saying that the art of Rob Liefeld finished him off, but you really have to wonder.

This is a thick book, and quite a tough read for anyone with any interest in comic art - emotionally speaking, but thank fuck someone wrote it.

The Road to Los Angeles

John Fante The Road to Los Angeles (1936)
It wasn't until I happened across this one in the second hand book store that I realised Fante had written a number of novels centred around Arturo Bandini, his fictional struggling novelist. This one features a much younger Bandini than Ask the Dust, and it's a very different novel, its tone seemingly informing Bandini's lousy personality. Where Ask the Dust maintains a sense of realism which patently inspired and is comparable with Bukowski, this one is just plain wild. My guess is that this younger Bandini represents a vicious satire on more or less every writer Fante ever met, and I recognise the type, much to my regret. These days he can't stop himself from name-dropping in all those endless repetitive posts on Twitter about who he's submitted a pitch to this week as though the rest of us have any reason to give a shit, or another blog post about what it's like to be a writer, or writing tips from the guy who can barely form an original or cohesive sentence as he vanishes up his own arsehole over and over and over. He's all plans and announcements and declarations but no action. He's got a literature degree and he may be just twenty-two but he already knows fucking everything and will happily tell you where you're going wrong, drawing on the great wealth of his worldly experience in fucking Sussex.

I said to Mona, 'Bring me books by Nietzsche. Bring me the mighty Spengler. Bring me Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant. Bring me books the rabble can't read.'

Mona brought them home. I read them all, most of them very hard to understand, some of them so dull I had to pretend they were fascinating, and others so awful I had to read them aloud like an actor to get through them.

I've known and even been edited by this barely coherent shithead*, so it's massively satisfying to watch Fante rip the piss out of him for 155 harrowing pages. It's horrible, but absolutely necessary, and I need more by John Fante.

*: Relax, Stuart. I don't mean you.

Justice League: A New Beginning

Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire & others
Justice League: A New Beginning (1989)
I've always been interested in the mechanics of humour, what works, what doesn't, and why. I've found it particularly interesting since moving to America because it often seems as though our respective chortles are drawn from quite different places. On close inspection, this isn't actually true but is rather a very much generalised reading of variant forms of humour in mainstream entertainment. One might propose a model wherein English humour tends to be at its most characteristic in a broader context and is thus presented without ceremony as part of the general narrative so that, for example, there's more to your average episode of Steptoe & Son than just the funnies and it is the environmental details which support the humour and give it power. By comparison, the American equivalent enters the room with a smirk, announces that you should be ready for laughter, and then tells a joke which isn't particularly funny whilst winking and digging you in the ribs with an elbow. Unfortunately, should we compare - off the top of my head - Miranda with Parks & Recreation, my stupid theory is revealed as simply differentiating that which is funny from that which isn't whilst having bugger all to say about the difference between English and American humour.

The Justice League of America was, as I'm sure we all know, DC comics banding together all of its most financially lucrative superheroes into a single gang and having them fight crime by means of teamwork. I tend to regard the strength of superhero comics as reliant on elements other than the superheroics, and barring one or two exceptions, DC never scored highly in this respect, being a stable of clean-cut role models who go outside the law to foil bank robberies or deliver the stolen wallet back to its millionaire owner like the Nietzschean boy scouts they are; and no matter how hard you might try to get Superman hooked on crack, the wholesome never quite washes out; but on the other hand, no-one really wants dark Superman, at least not over and over again. So when the Justice League was revived in 1987 they decided to go for laughs, presumably given that Watchmen already existed.

Although I can't really speak for anything more recent than September 1991 - the point at which I lost interest - the humour in American superhero comics has tended towards the heavy-handed, cornball and cutesy with nothing to alarm a concerned parent. We'll be able to see the gag, such as it is, coming from at least four pages away, and it will in any case have already been foreshadowed by a cover featuring all of the major characters pulling wacky faces.

Mercifully, Giffen's Justice League tried something different. It was the usual mix of slapstick, comedy turns to camera, double takes, eyes rolled and foreheads slapped in exasperation except for being played more or less straight against a backdrop of fairly typical superheroics and rendered in Kevin Maguire's beautifully understated, almost photorealist style. So here, in these first seven collected issues we have terrorists threatening the UN, a conspiracy, supervillains from another dimension, a team of bad guys based on playing cards, and another chapter in DC's war between the forces of chaos and order. It's mostly what you would expect to find in an eighties comic book named Justice League, except for the peculiarly dry focus on the epic and improbable as background to an otherwise realist narrative which is more or less soap opera, with the humour arising naturally from the contrast. Happily, this also allows the comic to do the usual superhero stuff without it seeming necessarily absurd.

I know. Sounds hilarious innit. Well, it was at the time. Thirty plus years later, I find I'm not laughing quite so hard although it still raises a chuckle here and there. I think this may be me rather than the comic book. Returning to Batman, the Green Lantern and others after time spent away, it takes me a few issues to see past how ridiculous these characters are, for the most part - which I don't really get with Marvel comics of equivalent vintage for some reason. Skipping ahead to a couple of later issues once I was done here, it also seems that the story was still finding its feet in this collection. Nevertheless, regardless of possibly subjective imperfections, this was a mostly great book, streets ahead of anything taking the Jerry Lewis approach to humour in comics, and of what became of this book once Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire handed in their cards.